Harry Potter and the Twelve Powers: Elimination/Release

 

Welcome back to our Summer Series. the 12 Powers and Harry Potter.  I hope you are enjoying this series as much as I am, well, maybe at least a bit.  We continue, this week, with the Power of Release or Elimination.

 

In The Enlightened Mind: Anthology of Sacred Prose, Stephen Mitchell relates this story, told by the Buddha:

 

“A man walking along a road sees a great river, its near bank dangerous and frightening, its far bank safe.  He collects sticks and foliage, makes a raft, paddles across the river, and reaches the other shore. Now, suppose that, after he reaches the other shore, he takes the raft and puts it on his head and walks with it on his head wherever he goes. Would he be using the raft in an appropriate way? No. A reasonable man will realize that the raft has been very useful to him in crossing the river and arriving safely on the other shore, but that once he has arrived, it is proper to leave the raft behind and walk on without it.  This is using the raft appropriately. In the same way, all truths should be used to cross over; they should not be held on to once you have arrived. You should let go of even the most profound insight on the most wholesome teaching; the more so, unwholesome teachings.”

 

“You should let go of even the most profound insight on the most wholesome teaching; all the more so, unwholesome teachings.” What are we holding on to?  What rafts are we still carrying that no longer serve us?  Recognizing that some rafts are what we deem “good stuff?” What is holding us back or weighing us down that we have not been willing to let go of? What old thoughts or old habits are taking up space in our lives that could be filled with fresh new ideas or actions?

 

In The Twelve Powers, Charles Fillmore taught, “There must be a renunciation or letting go of old thoughts before the new can find place in the consciousness.  Living old thoughts over and over keeps the inlets of the new thought closed.”

 

In Luke 5:36, Jesus says:  “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins”

 

Jesus’ is saying His new teachings representing the new wine.  We are the old wineskins. We must release old thoughts and beliefs to receive the new teachings of love from Jesus, our Way-shower.

 

So how do we prepare ourselves for new wine?  How do we release old patterns that no longer serve us?  First, we need to recognize that they don’t.  We need to realize that we’re carrying around rafts that we don’t need anymore.  Or in thinking in today’s terms, we need to clear out our mail folders, clear the cookies, or lighten our load by emptying out our backpacks.

 

In coaching, these beliefs, these old ideas, are called structures of knowing.  There are three criteria for discerning whether or not a structures of knowing is still serving you or not.

 

1. If you use a structure of knowing to rationalize doing something you said you wouldn’t do.

 

2. If you use a structure of knowing to rationalize not doing something you said you would do.

 

3. If you use a structure of knowing to make someone else wrong.

 

If your current belief or story or opinion meets any of those criteria, it’s time to let it go.  Dr. Williamson applies this similar prescription: We can release in a positive and freeing way by following these five steps – recognize it, face it, let it go, replace it with something better and healthier, and make restitution whenever and wherever possible.

 

Let it go.  It sounds so easy doesn’t it?  How do we let it go?  By forgiving. Forgive ourselves and forgive others, not because it’s the “nice” thing to do, but because it’s the only thing that frees us from our attachment to that particular person or situation.  Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we deny what happened or what was said.  Forgiveness means that we’re willing to let go of what we’ve made it mean.  We’re willing to let go of the power it has had over us… and move on.

 

While discussing some ideas from “A Course in Miricles” in class this week, we were reminded that every thought, event, action is a neutral thing until we place meaning to it.

 

If we keep the event or action neutral to us, there is no forgiveness required, no harm was done.

 

Release also means that we let go of stuff we deem “good” as we heard earlier in the raft story.  We may love a job or a home or a person.  And it may be time to move on, for our greater good and theirs.

 

This entails a lot of trust.  Trust that God’s will is only for our happiness.  We sometimes believe that our choice is to follow God’s will or to be happy, when the truth is that God’s will is only for our happiness. As Charles Fillmore once said, “We do not have a tricky God.”  Perhaps that’s the biggest belief we need to release – that God wants anything other than our happiness.

 

The Harry Potter character representing Release are the Dementors.

 

Read The Prisoner of Azkaban, pages 83 – 85,

 

“Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soul-less and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. “ – Professor Lupin to Harry

 

 

Based on Harry’s past, the Dementors had the ability to literally paralyze him, to suck the life right out of him.  And, ultimately, it was his happy memories that saved him.

How to defend against a Dementor? You use the Expecto Patronus charm.  It acts as a shield against the Dementor. “The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon – hope, happiness, the desire to survive…”

 

Harry’s Patronus was a stag, as was his Fathers.

I believe mine would be a hawk.

 

With the spell you must concentrate on a single very happy memory.

 

By drawing upon his recently created happy experiences, Harry was able to defeat the Dementors control over him.  Harry didn’t deny that there were terrible events in his past.  He just didn’t let them control him or his decisions.  He chose to focus on the present and to let go of the past.

 

What beliefs, what fears, are holding you back?  Is there something from your past that’s preventing you from moving forward?  Are you willing to let it go?  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a Zen master, teaches that: There is only one courage and that is the courage to go on dying to the past, not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it.  We all cling to the past, and because we cling to the past we become unavailable to the present.

 

Are you willing to become available to the present?  Are you willing to look, see and tell the truth about rafts that need to be placed down and let go?  Are you willing to go through your backpack and lighten your load?  Are you willing to become a new wineskin, ready and excited to receive new ideas, new opportunities… a new life?

 

 

Harry Potter and Strength

 

The third power in our series, Harry Potter and the Twelve Powers is Strength.  Strength is often seen as physical force, but true strength, the strength that demonstrates as our power, is quietness, inner confidence, non-resistance, and the ability to keep our center.  It is the ability to lead, to accomplish, and to hold firm to spiritual principles in daily living. To actually step forth in our re-discovery of Spiritual Truths.

 

Strength is also the balance between thinking and feeling, intellect and intuition.  It is the balance we attain when we connect our head and our heart.

The longest journey…from head to heart.  Did you know that?

 

Strength and faith must work together…faith must continually be strengthened and strength must be inspired to right action by faith.

 

True strength is patient.  It is calm, centered endurance.  Strength is persistent courage.  We’ve all had the experience of needing to take a deep breath, face our fear and do it anyway.  This is strength demonstrating as courage.

 

I see strength in another way.  Doing what must be done without asking…as in an emergency – stepping in and handling it.  This is what made me think of strength in this way, as I was writing this, taking care of my little brother when he was hurt while swimming.  We were at the community pool.  I was probably about 15 and ‘in charge’ of the younger kids. Frank was about 5 and at the shallow end of the pool.  He was jumping off the edge backwards, He and my sister were playing, and he didn’t clear it completely.  His chin was cut pretty deeply and he needed to go to the emergency room.

 

So, I couldn’t be scared or panic.  I tended to him as best as we could, arranged for the 2 middle boys to have supervision, got transportation and Frank ended up with clips in his chin.

 

Of course, after it was all said and done, THEN I got nervous!

 

But this is another example of the strength that we ALL have.

 

Faith and strength help us to see the bigger picture, to see beyond ourselves and meet challenges successfully.

 

The power of strength is often associated with the lower back, or the spine.  Let’s look at this.  A healthy spine is strong enough, firm enough, to hold us erect, but flexible enough for us to bend and move.  This is the nature of true strength – firm and flexible.  True strength is grounded, firm, in Principle, and flexible in the demonstration of that Principle.

 

“For thus said the Lord God… in returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust (or confidence) shall be your strength.”  So, what are we returning to? Trust in what?  When we need strength, we return to God.  We trust God.  We trust our Higher Self, our Inner Wisdom.

 

Strength supports us in doing difficult things.

 

Read Jesus, CEO, page 25-27.

 

Jesus did the difficult things because he had the calm confidence that comes from being connected to his Source.  Jesus knew, that you can’t please all the people all the time.   When faced with difficult duties or decisions, Jesus got quiet…  in returning and rest you shall be saved.  Throughout the pages of the New Testament we read of Jesus going off to be quiet, to return to God… to return to himself, to restore his strength.  Jesus knew in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

 

 

Our Harry Potter character for Strength is Sirius Black. I think it appropriate that today is Father’s Day, because Sirius was Harry’s God-Father, the closest thing to a Father Harry will get to know and experience.

 

Father’s Day is a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, and the paternal bonds of those who are standing in where birth Fathers may be missing for whatever reason. We honor fathers today with flowers for all who have fulfilled this part in our society, and that means not just males…not just biological parents, but all who fostered that paternal emotion.

 

Sirius exemplifies the ability to hold his selected course. Introduced in Book Three, The Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius is initially portrayed as a dangerous, escaped prisoner, accused of being in involved in the murder of Harry’s parents.  Ultimately, we learn the truth – that Sirius was wrongfully accused.  He endures prison, knowing he is innocent, and survives the Dementors to escape and help Harry.  He maintains his strength, his spiritual strength; in order to get out and help Harry.

Read Prisoner of Azkaban, pages 371 – 372.

 

What I find interesting about this passage is not just Sirius’ strength, but Harry’s.  Harry had been told for years that Sirius was a “bad guy”, the wizard responsible for his parent’s betrayal and murder.  But Harry was willing to be flexible, to trust that still, small voice, and believe Sirius.  This took strength. He followed his instinct about Sirius and Peter Pettigrew.

 

“We’ve all got both Light & Dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

 

This passage from Sirius to Harry states plainly what we all face when choice confronts us. That is where Spiritual Strength steps in.

 

 

Cora Fillmore wrote, “To have the strength of character that makes life seem effortless, nonresistant, is to have the inward joy that no one can take away.”

 

 

Harry Potter and the Twelve Powers: Love

 

Welcome back to our 12-week series, Harry Potter and the Twelve Powers.  Last Sunday we looked at the power of Faith.  Parker Palmer summarizes that Lesson this way;

“Faith is a venture into the unknown, into the realms of mystery, away from the safe and comfortable and secure. When we remain in the security of familiar surroundings, we have no need of faith. The very idea of faith suggests a movement away from our earthly securities into the distant, the unsettling, the strange.”
Today, we are going to look at the power of Love.  Love is the inner light that enables us to see good in all people, and I might add, in all life.

 

According to Rev. David Williamson, the second power, the power of Love, is our ability to know oneness with all and to desire that only good comes to all.  Love heals, harmonizes, renews, prospers and unites. Love is our ability to share, to draw together.  Our consciousness of love casts out fear, loneliness and ego demands.

 

 

“Love,” more than any of our spiritual powers, is thought of as something that comes to us from other people.  We think of “love” as something that others give to us rather than something we are.  We think of love as something we need to “feel”, rather than as part of the Cosmic process of which we are all an active expression.

Just as the heart circulates life-giving blood throughout our bodies, love circulates life-giving sustenance through our thinking-feeling nature and throughout our bodies and affairs.

 

Love is a spiritual power that we all have and we experience by loving.  Rev. Williamson relates that what the world needs now is not more love, but more “loving.”  In other words, we need to stop looking at love as a noun, and start realizing that it is a verb.

I gave a whole Lesson on Love as a Verb in the past.

 

Eric Butterworth taught, “You cannot give love to anyone, and no one can give love to you. You can be loving, which will create an environment in which others may find it easy to radiate and express love – and thus be loving to you.  Love is not a commodity to give, but a process through which you touch and express your own deeper nature.  Love, then, is not the plaything of the emotions or senses, but the action of divine law.”

 

Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  So often we forget the “as ourselves” part.  What does this mean?  It means we need to recognize that we are love.  Implicit in this self-awareness is that worthiness is irrelevant.  If you have brown hair, are you worried over whether or not you are worthy of brown hair?  Of course not.  You are Love.  It is your basic nature.  Worthiness is not the issue… but perhaps acceptance of that truth is.

 

Are we willing to love ourselves, truly and deeply?  Not in the narcissistic way that society tends to define self-love, but in a spiritually mature, centered, “within-dependent” way.  “Within dependent” as opposed to co-dependent.  Truly empathic, as opposed to patronizing.  What’s the difference?  True empathy is not saying “I understand just how you feel” because that’s impossible.  We can only feel our own feelings.  Empathy is not sympathy.  Empathy is a willingness to put ourselves into another person’s experience, a desire to truly understand.  The Native American’s put it this way, “I will walk four moons in the moccasins of my brother before judging him.”

 

How different our world would be if we all were willing to walk four moons in each other moccasins before judgment.

 

Charles Fillmore wrote, “We may talk about the wisdom of God, but the love of God must be felt in the heart.  It cannot be described, and one who has not felt it can have no concept of it from the descriptions of others.  The more we talk about love, the stronger it grows in the consciousness. If we persist in thinking loving thoughts and speaking loving words, we are sure to bring into our experience the feeling of that great love that is beyond description – the very love of God.”

 

In his book of Toltec wisdom, The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz teaches that there are two sources for our emotions: Love and Fear.

 

Love has no obligations.  Fear is full of obligations.  In the track of fear, whatever we do is because we have to do it, and we expect other people to do something because they have to do it.  We have the obligation and as soon as we have to, we resist it.  The more we resist, the more we suffer.  Love on the other hand, has no resistance.  Whatever we do is because we want to do it. It becomes a pleasure; it’s like a game, and we have fun with it.

 

Love has no expectations.  Fear is full of expectations.  When something we expect doesn’t happen, we feel hurt.  We blame others for not fulfilling our expectations.  When we love, we don’t have expectations; we do it because we want to, and if other people do it or not, it’s because they want to or not, and it’s nothing personal.  The “not taking it personally” is such an important point.  When we take anything personally, we instantly shift from a place of contributing to our relationship or situation, to making it all about us.  And since who we are, who we came here to be, is all about making a contribution, this shift takes us out of integrity.

 

Love is based on respect. Fear doesn’t respect anything, including itself.  If I feel sorry for you, it means I don’t respect you.  If I don’t respect you, then I try to control you.  Most of the time when we tell people how to live their lives, it is because we don’t respect them. We try to do for them what they should do for themselves.  When we don’t respect ourselves, we feel sorry for ourselves.  We tell ourselves we’re not good enough to make it in the world.  Self-pity comes from disrespect.

 

Love is ruthless; it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion.  Fear is full of pity; it feels sorry for everyone. On the other hand, love respects. I love you; I know you can make it.  I know you are strong enough, intelligent enough, good enough that you can make your own choices. If you fall, I can give you my hand, I can help you stand up.  I can say, “You can do it, go ahead.”  This is compassion, but it is not the same as feeling sorry.  Compassion comes out of respect and love; feeling sorry comes from a lack of respect and fear.

 

Love is completely responsible.  Fear avoids responsibility.  Trying to avoid responsibility is one of the biggest mistakes we can make, because every action has a consequence.  This is one of the wonderful things about Unity, we encourage each other to ‘do the right thing’, to be responsible.

 

Love is always kind.  Fear is always unkind.  Anger is nothing but fear with a mask. Sadness is fear with a mask. Jealousy is fear with a mask. With all those emotions that come from fear and create suffering, we can only pretend to be kind. We are not kind because we don’t feel good, we are not happy. If you are in the track of love, you don’t feel sorry for yourself or others.  You feel good about yourself, and because you are happy, you are kind. Love is always kind, and that kindness makes you generous and opens all the doors.  Love is generous; fear is selfish.

 

Love is unconditional. Fear is full of conditions.  In the track of fear, I love you IF you let me control you, IF you are good to me, IF you fit into the image I make for you. In the track of love, there is no IF; there are no conditions.  I love your for not reason, with no justification. I love you the way you are, and you are free to be the way you are. If I don’t like the way you are, then I’d better be with someone who is the way I like them to be.  We don’t have the right to change anyone else, and no one else has the right to change us.  If we are going to change, it is because we want to change, because we don’t want to suffer any longer.

 

Ruiz concludes this teaching by observing that, “We can talk about love and write a thousand books about it, but love will be completely different for each of us because we have to experience love.  Love is not about concepts; love is about action.  Love in action can only produce happiness. Fear in action can only produce suffering.

The only way to master love is to practice love. You don’t need to justify your love, you don’t need to explain your love; you just need to practice your love.  Practice creates the master.”

 

The Harry Potter character that symbolizes love is the half-giant, Reubeus Hagrid.  Hagrid is the Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts, and later, the teacher of the Care of Magical Creatures.  It is Hagrid who reveals the truth to Harry about his wizard parents and Harry’s own history.  Hagrid is early on revealed to be tender hearted and prone to tears. Despite his outward appearance, Harry immediately loves Hagrid. And Hagrid displays his love of all creatures, no matter how the creature may appear to others, like dragon babies and huge three-headed dogs named Fluffy. And we can’t forget his half-brother, Grop

 

Hagrid loves unconditionally.  Hagrid looks beyond appearances and sees into the heart.  Because he is so loving, he draws love to him.  Cora Fillmore wrote, “Love is the attractive force that draws our good to us according to the depth and strength of our realization of love.”  Hagrid’s realization of love is of such a depth and strength that he exudes good and therefore draws good to him, even though it sometimes takes a while to see it.

 

I find it interesting that it is Hagrid, our symbol of the power of love, who reveals the truth to Harry about his heritage.  Jesus taught us to speak the truth in love, and that the truth will set us free.  Hagrid didn’t try to protect Harry from the truth, but loved and respected him enough to tell him that truth.  Remember the teaching of Don Miguel Ruiz?  Hagrid didn’t feel sorry for Harry, he didn’t pity Harry because of his difficult childhood.  He respected Harry, and therefore told him the truth.

 

And what is that truth?  From The Mastery of Love, “The teachings that come from India, from the Toltecs, the Christians, the Greeks – from societies all over the world – come from the same truth.  They talk about reclaiming your Divinity and finding God within you. They talk about having your heart completely open and becoming wise. Can you imagine what kind of world this would be if all humans opened their hearts and found the love inside?  We can do that!  Everyone can do it in their own way. It’s not about following any imposed idea; it’s about finding yourself….

 

When you love with no conditions, you the human, and you the God, align with the Spirit of Life moving through you.  Your life becomes the expression of the beauty of the Spirit.  “Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with Love, you dream becomes a masterpiece of art.”

 

Harry Potter and the Twelve Powers: Faith

 

Today we start a series on the 12 powers and we will include a character from the Harry Potter book series to make things a bit more interesting.

 

Most of you know of my love of all things Harry Potter. And Charles Fillmore’s 12 Powers are a very important part of our love of Unity and our souls growth.

 

Today we will look at the power of Faith; did you place Ron Weasley with Faith?

 

 

 

The twelve powers, as suggested by Jesus and discerned by Charles Fillmore, are basic, primal spiritual gifts or abilities that everyone possesses.  We don’t acquire these Powers; we already have them. We use our Twelve Powers all the time, according to our understanding of them.

 

The Twelve Powers are: Faith, Love, Strength, Wisdom, Power, Imagination, Understanding, Will, Order, Enthusiasm (Zeal), Release (Renunciation), Life.

 

 

According to the Rev. Dr. David Williamson:

 

Our suffering, frustration, sense of failure, and world disorder come mostly from our misuse or imbalance in the use of our Powers. Constructive, enlightened understanding and use of our Powers leads to salvation.  The word salvation comes from the Latin salvus which means healing or wholeness.  Salvation or being saved means the state of healing or wholeness that comes about by allowing the Christ consciousness to call forth and direct our Powers, as Jesus called forth and commissioned his disciples to carry forth his.

 

 

 

Faith is a spiritual power, but it is not confined to religion. We use our Faith power whenever we give mental attention to something.

 

In Matt. 9:29, “According to your faith be it done to you.”

 

Faith enables us to look past appearance of lack, limitation, or difficulty. With faith, we can take hold of a divine idea and believe in it even though we do not yet see any physical evidence of it.

 

It goes beyond thinking to knowing with ones whole being the Truth of the unseen.

 

Have you ever thought, “Oh, if only I had more faith!”  You already have all the faith you will ever need.  The issue is not how much faith you have, but where your faith is invested. We all have faith on many different levels and in many different ways, but its most perfect expression is found within our spiritual nature. It is that deep inner knowing that the good you desire is already yours.

 

The Buddha said it this way, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”

This is good news and bad news, because what this means is that we usually get exactly what we believe in, what we have faith in.

The ancient text called the Upanishads addresses this area of belief and faith with the analogy of a ball being batted back and forth.

It states that we human beings, given our basic belief in separation, are batted by two seeming forces within: one, the upward drive to evolve into the spiritual awakened beings that we are, aware of our oneness with all life, and as such, the ability to see ourselves and others as one powerful and infinite Mind; the other, the fierce downward thrust of our past conditioning as separate, self-oriented, physical creatures, at the mercy of all kinds of outer forces.

Charles Fillmore said that “Faith is the perceiving power of the mind.”  Faith is inner-sight, or insight.  It is our ability to look, to perceive, with our mind, to give our mental attention to something. Faith is our ability to draw our good from the invisible to the visible realm.

 

What are you placing your faith in? The outer world?  Some other person or thing? Money maybe?

This is an important question to be asking yourself.

 

Peter is the disciple of Faith, not because he was always faithful, but because he wasn’t, not at first.  Peter chose to deepen his power of Faith.  He grew in his ability to perceive and to believe. When Peter recognized the truth of who Jesus was, he was opened to the possibility of who he, Peter, was.  That they were both sons of God, as we are all children of God. It could be said that Peter had the ultimate a-ha moment, a glimpse of the higher realization of truth.

We’ve all had them, those moments of seeing behind the veil, of sensing the truth of who we are, and the truth of our existence. Many of those moments are subtle, almost constant, and often undiscerned and unheeded. Occasionally, the calls are quite dramatic–sudden, powerful, life-changing experiences that literally pick us up and point us toward our destiny. A crisis, loss of job, breakup of a relationship, disillusionment with life, etc. We could call them wake up calls from God.

Heb. 11:1 states; “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 

 

Are you familiar with the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?  Indiana Jones was on a search for the holy grail, the most sacred of Christian artifacts.  He was literally within arms reach of the prize when his father, on the quest with him, was mortally wounded.  Only water from the well of life, found with the grail, could save him.

 

To make the last step of his journey, he had to cross a bottomless chasm.  There was no visible bridge.  But the instructions, although cryptic, were clear that all that was needed was a step of faith.  Not a leap, not a bound, just a step.  So, Indie took a deep breath, visibly shaking, and stepped into the chasm.  As if by magic, a bridge appeared before him and he could walk safely to the cave that held the grail. What we see once he’s on the bridge, however, is that it has been there all along.  He needed to be willing to step out onto it before it could be seen. He needed to change his perspective before the miracle became visible.

 

The bridge had always been there.  But until someone had the faith to take that first step, it had remained invisible.

 

If you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

 

 

So where does Harry Potter and Ron Weasley fit in with the Power of Faith?

 

One of six children in a family of wizards, Ron is the youngest boy. Although fiercely loyal to Harry, Ron does have his moments of human jealousy and anger, just as our faith might waver.  Like Peter, Ron represents faith because he grew into his ability to perceive and believe.  Ron has faith that things will work out, even when appearances say otherwise.

 

Read Sorcerer’s Stone, pages 281 – 284.

Ron had faith that his sacrifice would not be in vain, that the universe was on his side.

 

He set himself up against the history of his brothers who had successful, & in the case of the twins, interesting examples before him at Hogwarts.   Yet he also believed in himself as he chose who he would be at school. Throughout the 7 books you could see him coming into his own wisdom and courage.

 

Marianne Williamson teaches that, To trust in the force that moves the universe is faith.  Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary. Faith is believing that the universe is on our side, and that the universe knows what it’s doing. Faith is a psychological awareness of an unfolding force for good, constantly at work in all dimensions.

 

Like Indie stepping into the chasm, Ron was willing to step onto the chessboard, taking his place in the game, and ultimately saving his friends

 

(For those of you who haven’t read the book, he was only injured and lived to be Harry’s best friend in all the books.)

 

 

Ron’s faith was evident throughout the book series. You will see his attraction to Hermione grow through the books too, and I believe he had faith that they would eventually be together.

 

I won’t say much more in case you wish to read the books yourselves. Worth the read!

 

 

So, we see, Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary. We need to check ourselves, have we connected to our inner Higher Self?  Have we unlocked that vault of faith available to us if we just let it unfold?

 

How do we do that? Here are some steps suggested by Rev. Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann in her book, ‘Your God Given Potential’:

 

1. Receptivity – listen, learn, & grow in understanding of spiritual truths and being receptive to God-ideas.
2. Assent –  go beyond receptivity till you are willing to agree with the spiritual truths for further, deeper investigation.
3. Belief – the mental acknowledgement of Truth that is an outgrowth of these first 2 steps. It is the ability to believe intellectually, if not yet wholly, in the goodness of God.
4. Trust –  Step from the intellectual acceptance of Truth ideas to the spiritual realization of them. Deepen your trust and reinforce it with understanding until you have a faith that is the basis for action.
5. Faith –  Believe in the divine potential that is the Christ; understanding that it inspires you to action.
6. Conviction – When you have conquered all doubts, fears, and even the temptation to judge by your senses, you reach a point of spiritual conviction.
7. Realization –  you no longer have faith you are the Christ expression of faith.

 

 

“According to your faith be it done to you” (Matt. 9:29).